We Wish You A Merry Christmas

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All Rise...

Thanks to this wretched Christmas special, Judge Paul Corupe now breaks into hives when he hears the titular song.

The Charge

"Of course you all know how Christmas carols came to be. You don't?
Well, stick around!"

The Case

What's your favorite heartwarming animated Christmas special? The
Peanuts one, perhaps? Maybe The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? And
who doesn't love the stop-motion Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special
they always trot out just before the holiday season? Classics, all of them, but
for every true-blue yuletide mainstay, there are dozens of other similar
cartoons released each and every year that are forgotten as quickly as last
week's fruitcake. We Wish You a Merry Christmas is one such minor entry
in the animated Christmas special sweepstakes, a sad effort that can't help but
put a little damper on even the merriest case of holiday cheer.

Promising to reveal all about the origins of traditional Christmas carols,
our reindeer narrator (country crooner Travis Tritt) introduces a story about
penniless orphans Ollie, Ted, and Cindy, who know it's far better to give than
to receive. They desperately want to give back to their community, but being but
poor little kids, they have some difficulty coming up with a way to share their
yuletide spirit with the fellow residents of Harmony. After their first few
attempts at Christmas cheerleading end in slapstick disaster, they hunker down
on Christmas Eve night to compose a song with the help of Mrs. Claus, who
miraculously arrives to provide some inspiration. In true holiday miracle style,
the simple carol they put together—We Wish You a Merry Christmas,
naturally—reminds everyone the true meaning of the season.

Featuring the voices of TV starts like Nell Carter, Lacey Chabert, and John
Forsythe, We Wish You a Merry Christmas casts its clumsy holiday spell
with bad storytelling and unimpressive, limited animation. Featuring
simplistically-drawn characters in both senses of the term, the show follows in
the footsteps of every other Christmas special preoccupied with the
"true" essence of the season, but rarely have I seen it done so
poorly. Listen, I can buy into a whimsical story about how Rudolph came to guide
Santa's sleigh, and I can accept that Odie can construct Garfield a Christmas
backscratcher despite a lack of opposable thumbs, but the origin of Christmas
carols is an easily explained cultural phenomenon—why confuse kids with
some silly back story? It's a paper-thin premise at best, but even worse, We
Wish You a Merry Christmas makes cloying use of orphans, paupers with hearts
of gold, and desperate, selfless wishes to further its patently false origin
tale. It's a blatant case of paint-by-numbers sentimentality, and the program's
obvious heartstring-tugging tactics send this forgettable exercise straight to
the bottom of Santa's sack.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas does look pretty good on DVD, however,
with nice bright colors and not a speck of dirt or dust to be seen. Sound is
presented in a passable 2.0 mix that renders the dialogue and the truly wretched
songs in perfect clarity. Though this disc sports no extras, it is absolutely
laden down with trailers for related family-oriented fare. You can jump past
these commercial messages, but the DVD itself has no menu, so you must pay
attention when the feature does start, so you don't accidentally chapter skip
over it, assuming it to be yet another ad (as I did, twice).

While some kids might find We Wish You a Merry Christmas to be a
passable timewaster as they wait for Saint Nick to arrive, parents will probably
want to grab some egg nog and head to another room to get a jump on that big
pile of wrapping.